Huge Super Bowl party, Murphy's Law.....

Sorry to hear about your problem; at least you got to see the (most exciting ever?) fourth quarter!!!?!! Dunno the Panny lamp warranty, probably 90 days? If yes you're likely outta luck. I think the mfrs have such wimpy Lamp warranties because the lamp is subject to abuse they can't control (e.g. many multiple On/Offs per day, yanking the plug on a pj so it doesn't cool, etc.). But in some cases folks just get unlucky like you have. One reason I suppose why 3rd party lamp warranties can find a market...

Damn lucky you had that spare around. At this point I'm running with my rear hanging in the air, as my first ae900 bulb went at 1100 hours (before I could pull it at 1800 hours and keep it as the "spare" but now that the superbowl is passed and the academy awards are a washout (wifes' friends sure like all those pretty dresses on the big screen), there is nothing big until I make the 1080 upgrade (between now and the pre-season). It doesn't appear that panny is going to get value competitive fast enough to keep my business.

Of course, the Soprano's finale still holds the record for bulb blowing heart attacks - I know a lot of AVS'ers were like myself, believing the unthinkable happened right up to the second those credits showed up.

Yeah you still got lucky compared to me... my HD72 suffered the lamp driver issue 30 minutes before kickoff... nothing to do about it and no bulb to swap in (this bulb has around 500 hours on it).

Ended up watching superbowl on 26 inch TV instead of 85 inch One of my buddies even drove in from 50 miles away to partake... needless to say I was PISSED... now I still have to get Optoma to fix it.... hopefully.